Google Takes a Year to Sell as Many Phones as Apple Sells in a Week

For the longest time, we were convinced that Google was really only interested in the software side of things. From Android to Chrome to Gmail to YouTube, they didn't really care what hardware you were using. But things are shifting. You've got everything from the Chromecast to the Google Home Mini with clear company branding. But how are those Pixel smartphones doing? Well, it depends on expectations.

According to a tweet sent out by Francisco Jeronimo of IDC, Google shipped a total of 3.9 million Pixel phones in 2017. That includes all the phones in the Pixel lineup, including the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL.

For a lot of companies, selling several million of anything must sound pretty good. But to put that 3.9 million figure in perspective, there were a total of 1.5 billion smartphones shipped globally last year. In other words, Pixel phones accounted for about 0.26% of all smartphones shipped in 2017.

Care for a little more perspective? Apple sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 77.3 million iPhones in Q4 2017. If each quarter is exactly 13 weeks (52/4 = 13), that works out to almost 6 million iPhones being shipped each week or about 50% more than what Google sold in Pixel phones in a similar seven-day period.

Of course, this isn't a completely fair apples-to-apples kind of comparison. Google is presumably perfectly satisfied if you up a different Android phone from Samsung, LG, HTC, ZTE, Huawei, or any number of other partners. The global market share for Android still surpasses iOS, after all.